Re: Help: PCB Trace Milling Software

Alan,

You can do simple to medium boards with a raster to vector converter
like CorelTRACE. Just import the Pcb image and "trace" it (on another
layer).Be sure to clean it up, and remember to run as fast as you can
(spindle AND feedrate) BEWARE of tiny, CONDUCTIVE copper "slivers"
with this method. (More likely at slow spindle speeds and feedrates.)

In the last two days I posted a couple of commercial solutions, but
for a lot of stuff the above works.

Think and tinker(on the web) has the cutting bits to do a good job.

In days of old, photo plotters used for pc bd's actually had cutouts
in a sheet of material to define the apertures. These were rotated
into position(like a viewmaster toy, or a turret punch), and a light
source flashed on or off as necessary. Lines(traces) were made by
moving the board under the aperture(while the light was on).

Nowadays, the apertures are digitally created "virtually" from an
"aperture list" of instructions/definitions, usually in the header of
the file. And lasers do the "plotting".

Gerber used to put out a book of specs. for the RS-274X code. For
anybody who doesn't already know, Gerber Scientific, as one of the
main players in the CNC world early on, co-opted the gcode spec. and
called it gerber(for both their routers and photo plotters). So
"Gerber" files are just ANOTHER couple of flavors of Gcode.

Hope this helps.

Ballendo